These are the rules and regulations that ALL members must meet and abide with in The Garden of Friendship. These rules are the foundation of our group. By displaying your Proud Member plaque and becoming a member of GOF, you represent us and must therefore abide by the rules of the group. Failure to do so may result in termination of your membership.

BEFORE you complete the membership application, please read the GOF Rules and Regulations. If after reading our guidelines, you are still interested in joining our group, please complete the membership application form. By applying for membership in GOF, you are agreeing to these Rules and Regulations.

1. The Garden of Friendship is a diverse group and welcomes all men and women to apply. The only restriction is that members must be at least 18 years of age.

2. All members are required to use the name they choose as their Garden name in all email or guestbook signings done on behalf of the Garden as well as in committee mail.

3. We welcome members with and without websites. Websites submitted for membership must be personal websites. Commercial sites and strictly blogging sites will not be considered. Because we require that all members display their Proud Member Plaque and our Webring fragment on their website, we will create a starter site for you upon completion of 30 days of membership if you do not already have a website. Starter websites will be offered at a free hosting site. Starter sites will include your GOF Proud Member plaque, the GOF Webring Fragment, an email link, a guestbook link, an About Me page (you will be required to submit a personal write up to be included on this page) and a third page with content of your choice. This page is limited to 500 words maximum. Photos or images may also be included.

There are several templates available to choose from for your starter site. Once the initial layout is complete, any further edits will be your own responsibility. We are able to offer you links to tutorials and online courses to assist you with learning HTML if you wish to do further editing to your website.

4. All sites submitted must be family friendly websites. Sites containing profanity or pornography will NOT be permitted, nor will sites displaying racism, hatred, violence, or sites promoting illegal activity. There will be no association with any sites that may be offensive to the general public or a threat to members.

5. We do not have specific regulations pertaining to the content of submitted sites, but do require more than a list of links and ads or a commercial site. We also ask that websites include some personal information about yourself, or an “About Me” page so that other members can learn a little bit about you. While we stress diversity here in the Garden of Friendship, we ask that applicants who have a foreign language website have an English version of your site or an English translator available so that everyone in the Garden of Friendship can visit and enjoy your website! We do reserve the right to deny an application that we feel does not comply with our Charter and Our Creed, and our Rules and Regulations, or contain appropriate content.

6. In order to remain a member of this group, you must be a member of at least one GOF committee, and you must be ACTIVE on all the committees you choose to join. GOF Members are restricted to a maximum of 6 committees. All members who are inactive for a period over 30 days will have their membership revoked. The Garden does allow members to take up to a 30 day LOA. Requests for over 30 days will be handled at the discretion of the Garden Keepers. The Garden Keepers also reserve the right to limit any members they feel may be abusing this policy. The Garden of Friendship asks that all members refrain from posting to our mailing lists while on Leave of Absence. The only exception to this would be members who are grieving the loss of a loved one may post to our Grief Support List. Members are not eligible to participate in our tournaments and games while they are on Leave of Absence.

7. All members MUST display their Proud Member Plaque on their personal website and it must be linked back to the Garden (http://www.gardenoffriendship.org) The Proud Member plaque must be displayed in it's original size, 234 x 289 pixels. All members MUST also join the main Garden of Friendship webring which unites our members in a circle of Friendship. Membership in our other webrings is optional, depending on your site's content. Members are allowed 30 days upon membership approval to have the ring fragment and Proud Member plaque up on the site.

8. Respect other members of G.O.F. You must treat every member as you wish to be treated, in a fair and caring manner. Any member that abuses another member in any way will immediately be removed from the group.

9. As a member of G.O.F., you agree to participate in mandatory mailing lists from your committee(s) and the main G.O.F. mailing list which is used to make important announcements about the Garden. Other mailing lists are considered optional. Chatting is allowed in the committee lists but they must NOT be used for Spam, vote requests, page announcements, or for personal gain etc. There is not to be any use of stationary in any mailing list except for the Garden Buddies List.. Music files are NOT to be embedded or attached in messages sent through our Committee or GOF Mailing Lists. The use of sigtags is acceptable, although they must be family friendly. GOF is a family friendly site and graphics or tags with adult content are not permitted in our mailing lists, on Committee or Fun Group pages, or in contests within GOF. We do not allow cross posting on our mailing lists. Failure to comply with the rules for committee mailing lists by sending unrelated e-mail through the committee lists will first result in a warning message. If messages continue to be posted through Yahoogroups, your access to the mailing list may be restricted.

10. If you break any of the Garden of Friendship rules, you will be dealt with by either The Grievance Judge or The Garden Keepers. We will always try to treat members fairly and equally, but will not tolerate misconduct. We must keep the best interest of GOF in mind.

11. Members are not permitted to use the Garden of Friendship Website or Membership Listing to recruit members for other groups. Promoting other groups through our mailing lists is also restricted. Failure to comply will result in termination of your membership. You may not collect our members e-mail addresses for your own personal mailing list without their consent.

12. Members who leave the Garden of Friendship (either through resignation or removal) must wait a period of 3 (three) months before they may reapply for Membership.